So today I was in the kitchen, making a sandwich and minding my own business. Like a good woman should, right? The blinds were open, and it was a nice winter afternoon, the sky a clear blue, the sun shining on what remained of the snow storm of the previous week and the matted, dirty patches of brown grass in the backyard. I decided on jelly and cream cheese on whole wheat bread for my sandwich, which is a combination most people tend to go "EEEEEW" at, but it's actually really very good. It was always my favorite after school treat. Even now, years later when I no longer attend school, it is a great snack for the average mid-afternoon, like this one. I started by slapping on some softened Philly cream cheese, making sure to get it all the way to the corners of the bread so that my first bite into the sandwich would not be bread-ends, but have some filling in there too. After licking off the knife without a care in the world, I stuck it into the jar of grape jelly. It was just then that I noticed something. The label did not read "Grape Jelly" as one would expect from a jar of simple, domestic grape jelly. Instead, it looked like this:

[Yes this is an actual picture of the jar of jelly in question.]

As you can clearly see, this is not jelly. These are GRADE-A FANCY CONCORD PRESERVES. What I want to know is, what the hell happened to all the normal grape jelly in the world. Consumerism has been brainwashed into believing that their purchases are sub-par if they do not say on the label that they are THE BEST, GRADE-A, NUMBER ONE, FANCY-PANTSY PRODUCT OF ULTIMATE EXTRAVAGANCE. What's up, world, plain old jelly isn't good enough for you anymore? Do you have some sort of issue with a simple, normal, honest-to-goodness product? Or are you really that dumb that you refuse to buy anything that isn't jacked up by advertising, each product shoving competitors out of the way and getting up in your face saying "NO NO PICK ME, I'M THE BEST!!" Do you spend many minutes in the aisle of your local supermarket, contemplating different choices of jelly, making sure that you pick the one that has the most to say about how fancy and wonderful it is, and how luxurious it would be to eat THIS jelly over it's more subtle, modest neighboring brand? Am I the only one who longs for normal jelly? Am I the only one who notices things like this, one of the many ways commercialism and advertising is brainwashing society? Am I the strange one, for being willing to settle for so called "inferior" jelly, if only to go against the grain and resist against this conspiracy? Because it is a conspiracy. You may not see it now. But sooner or later, you will be in the same position, standing in your grocery store aisle, with the intent of buying some grape jelly of your own. And you will see. And you will remember. What will you choose?

Well that's natural. A human is naturally going to go for what they are told to be the best. I agree that labeling has become somewhat obnoxious, but if they don't do it, then they're just another food item on the shelf. Nothing really grabs you to buy it. They escape the crowd of the generic norm and move onto "THE BEST". Given they become another generic "THE BEST" item, but it's much better than being labeled in the lower class version. It's like if I recommended you two bands, assuming in this hypothetical situation you've never listened to them before, Silversun Pickups and Muse. I could say "Check out Silversun Pickups. They're good. And check out Muse, they're REALLY good." Which one would you go for first? If you only had to choose one?

I mean I can see your point, but y'know, I don't even eat jelly. I think I've only had it once anyway.